


Who Wants to Live Forever?

by lionofsounis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, self indulgent because i love the history of this show and any time past companions are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionofsounis/pseuds/lionofsounis
Summary: "We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one.""Memories become stories when we forget them."***Post Pyramid at the End of the World, The Doctor shares some of his stories and memories with Bill.
Relationships: The Doctor & Bill Potts, Twelfth Doctor & Bill Potts
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Who Wants to Live Forever?

**Author's Note:**

> there are a few minor continuity/canon errors in here but i liked them and the idea of applying continuity to who is laughable at best so i have done what we all do which is reject canon that is inconvenient to us. thanks and enjoy

The Doctor found Bill on the university rooftop where they often met to eat takeout and/or avoid Nardole. She was sitting on his side of the bench, staring off into space when he arrived. She didn’t seem to hear him open the door, or step out onto the roof, or put down the bundle of items he’d brought with him.

He cleared his throat theatrically.

She turned with an equally loud – but far more genuine – sniff. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks and she made no move to wipe them away.

The Doctor paused, peering at her with his questioning scowl (not to be mistaken for his angry scowl, his concerned scowl, his confused scowl [which he would claim doesn’t exist], or his happy scowl).

Bill watched him freeze in place, arms slightly raised, then scurry over in front of her with that straight-backed penguin waddle of his. “Are you all right?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah.” She sniffed again. “Yeah, I’m just – they’re happy tears, you know. I mean. I think they’re happy tears. Maybe slightly sad tears. But mostly happy. Possibly exhausted tears.”

Bill watched the Doctor process this information. Nothing about his appearance changed, of course, but she imagined his brain was sort of like a computer. Right now there was probably a little spinning wheel whirling around in there, buffering for him while he tried to figure out how to socialize with this insignificant little human earth person.

No. Not insignificant. Bill told herself to stop thinking that was how he saw her. He had told her Penny wasn’t out of her league. He had told her he put up with humanity’s idiocy because of her. And besides, just today, Bill had –

“Are you cold?”

Really? That’s what he had? He saw a girl crying, was given an utterly unclear explanation for it, and _that_ was his follow-up question? Bill thought someone ought to make him some flashcards with handy human phrases on them so that he could learn to talk to people. The kind teachers made for kids who had trouble socializing.

“I’m all right,” Bill managed, a little thrown.

“Are you sure?”

Bill glanced around her at the snow littering the rooftop. “I – a little, I guess, but I’m really all right, Doctor.”

“No, you’re not. Don’t worry, I brought a blanket.” He trotted back to the door and returned in a flash. The Doctor only moved slowly when he was monologuing. “Here,” he said, and thrust a thermos into Bill’s hand. It was the same thermos they’d shared earlier, but the heat emanating into Bill’s chilled palms told her it had been refilled with a new batch of cocoa.

“Um, thanks.”

He shook out the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders (a little stiffly), and plopped down beside her.

Bill fingered the blanket. “Uh, where’d you get this?”

“I made it. Well, the Tardis made it. But I helped.”

“The Tardis can knit?”

“What? No, the Tardis made the cocoa.”

“I meant the blanket. Like, have you got a stash of blankets in your office for when it’s cold and you’ve got a crying lesbian on your rooftop?”

“In my off—Don’t be ridiculous, Bill. I have a stash of blankets in the Tardis. You have to be careful not to take the ones Amy turned into ponchos, though.”

“Sorry, _ponchos?”_

But he wasn’t listening. “So,” he said, in his professor voice. “Happy sad exhausted crying, eh?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Couldn’t just pick one?”

Bill rolled her eyes. “Oh shut up.” She rubbed her thumb against the thermos. She knew without looking that the Doctor was watching her. Waiting for the mystery to unfold. She was glad he didn’t ask anymore questions though. “It’s just… it’s my mum, you know? She saved the world today. And I’m happy cuz the Monks are gone and everything’s back to normal and I’m not dead and you’re not dead, but my mum still is. But she also saved the world today. And I want to be excited that my mum saved the world, but I’m just so bloody tired, you know?”

“I do know.”

Bill gave him a look.

“Bill, I’m two thousand years old. I think I know how it feels to be tired.” He must have sensed she wanted to argue because he continued, “you feel tired because saving the world is exhausting and you feel tired because grief makes you tired and because happiness makes you tired. And feeling all three at once is its own special kind of tired. And on top of that, you feel silly for grieving because things didn’t turn out nearly as bad as you thought they would.”

Bill looked at him for a long moment. The strange thing about the Doctor, she reflected, was that on one hand, he was so very very easy to read. She knew he hadn’t been working with the Monks. She knew he would have a secret plan and would eventually save the day. She predicted what he was going to do and was right about every single thing. But at the same time, he never stopped being unfathomable. She wondered how much grief a person had experienced by the time they got to be two thousand years old. She was only in her twenties and she thought she’d had quite enough of grief. Two thousand years was… well, unfathomable. But at the same time, he was right, and he’d described how she felt perfectly.

“It wasn’t your mum, you know,” he said, after a long silence.

Another of the Doctor’s predictable qualities: he loved a technicality. Bill heaved a sigh. “I know, I know, it wasn’t really her, it was just my memories of her and I didn’t really know her so I can’t say that’s really what she was like and –”

“What?” The Doctor was wearing his confused scowl now, the scowl whose existence he would have denied. “What are you talking about, Bill? No, no, no.” But he plowed on without letting her answer.

 _Typical,_ she thought.

“I don’t mean your memories. Your memories of your mum are exactly as real as you think they are.”

“But they’re not, though. They’re just… they’re just a story, I guess. A story I made up about her.”

“Did I ever tell you about Clara?”

The change of topic threw Bill momentarily. “No?”

“I had this friend, named Clara. We travelled together, like you and I. And then one day she died and I forgot her.”

“How do you mean, you forgot her?”

“I mean, all my memories of her were just gone. I can remember where we went, what we did. Even the things she said to me. But I don’t remember her. At first I was certain that if I saw her again, I’d know her. But as time went on… well, now I’m not so sure.”

“You looked for her, though, didn’t you?”

“Of course. But I never found her. I woke up one day in the middle of the Nevada desert. Without the Tardis or anything, just my guitar.”

 _Typical,_ Bill thought again.

“The only thing around for miles was a diner. And the only person in it was a waitress. I didn’t have any money, but she gave me a drink anyway and I told her all about Clara and played my guitar for her and I suppose I thought it would make me remember her face but it didn’t.”

“You told a waitress about travelling in space and time and getting your memory wiped?”

“Well, I told a cafeteria worker about it, didn’t I?” The Doctor gave Bill a pointed look.

“Okay, fair enough.” Bill wanted to ask if Clara also smiled when she didn’t understand something, but she wasn’t sure the Doctor would remember that, and she didn’t think it would be fair to remind him of things he couldn’t remember.

“This waitress asked me if it really happened, or if it was just a story. But the thing is, all memories are stories. Memories never really go away, they just turn into stories after a while. We all become stories in the end.”

“Not you,” Bill pointed out, a little ruefully. At two thousand years old, there wasn’t any reason to assume the Doctor wouldn’t live forever.

But he chuckled. “Ohohoho, no, Bill. I’ve become a story for a lot of people. The scary handsome genius from space who showed up just in the nick of time to save them from almost certain destruction.” Bill snorted and rolled her eyes, but the Doctor was grinning one of his rare grins. “Sounds good, eh? I’d certainly read it.”

“Of course you would.” She snorted again.

“But that’s not what I meant. I mean, it wasn’t your mum who saved the world. It was you. You created a story out of your mum’s memories and you used it to save the world.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

Bill sipped her cocoa and mulled it over. It was a nice thought. Obviously she’d rather her mum were alive and with her, but since she couldn’t have that… well, stories live forever. That was how the Doctor still had Clara, and it was how Bill still had her mum.

She had asked him once, back at Christmas when they met together in his office and she’d told him about her mum. She asked him if having pictures of someone you lost really helped. And then a day later Moira had mysteriously found a box of pictures of her mum with the Doctor’s scowling face peaking out from the background of one. Bill had never brought it up. She got the feeling he hadn’t wanted to be thanked for them. “So those pictures on your desk – neither of those are Clara, are they?”

“No.”

“And when you didn’t wipe my memory, that’s because it happened to you, right?”

It wasn’t obvious, just a sort of slight twitch in his facial expression before smoothing it back into its characteristic frown, but the Doctor seemed momentarily uncomfortable. “Right.”

“And that song that I heard you playing in the bar that night. You said it was called ‘I Forget’.”

“Yes?”

“Is it about Clara?”

The Doctor sighed, but not really in a reluctant or tired way; it was just sort of sad. “Yes.”

“I never said thank you, you know.” Bill avoided his eyes by watching her thumb trace around the edge of the thermos cup. “For the pictures.”

“I didn’t want you to thank me. You weren’t even supposed to know it was me.”

“I know. But… now we both know that we both know, and anyway, your reflection was in the mirror of one of them.” She couldn’t help a smile at that, and glanced up to see his reaction, which was exactly as indignant as she hoped it’d be.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

Bill laughed. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, you know.”

“Well that’s only because nobody else you know has a time machine.”

“Well, okay, yeah.” Bill laughed again. Then she frowned. “Hang on, if you’ve got a time machine, couldn’t you just go back and visit your previous self and see what Clara looked like?”

The Doctor looked aghast. “Haven’t you listened to any of my lectures? I can’t cross my own time stream. It could destroy reality itself.”

Bill cocked an eyebrow.

“Shut up, yes, I’ve done it before. But it’s always a mistake. Well, except for – never mind, shut up. My past selves are always annoying anyway.”

“Your past selves?”

“Time Lords have this thing. Instead of dying we regenerate. Come back with a new body and face. Bit of a personality upgrade.”

“This is an upgrade?”

Now the Doctor looked mortally offended, an expression that sent Bill into a fit of poorly suppressed giggles. “Are you less grumpy than you were before?”

“No, last time I wasn’t grumpy at all, or the time before that. I was more like an overexcited puppy. All that grinning and leaping about.” He shook his head. “What was I thinking?”

“I would love to have seen that.”

He glowered at her.

“So wait, wait, you could like… meet someone you used to travel with, just bump into them any old place, and they might not even know it’s you?”

“Well, I try to avoid it, but it’s happened.”

“Isn’t that like, really awkward?”

 _“Really_ awkward.”

“Wait, hang on,” Bill suddenly sat up straighter. “So when I got the Monks to give you your sight back so that you wouldn’t get blown up and die, you wouldn’t have died anyway?”

“Er, no.”

Bill felt her jaw drop. She told herself to close her mouth but she couldn’t. “You piece of –”

“Well it’s not something I broadcast! I don’t know how many times I _can_ regenerate. We’re only supposed to get twelve regenerations but I’m already past the limit so I don’t really know how many I’ve got. And besides, just because I can come back from the dead doesn’t mean I like it. It’s very unpleasant, you know.”

“Oh yeah, poor you.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Is that how come you’re two thousand years old?”

“Yeah.”

“How many times have you regenerated?”

“Well, this is technically my thirteenth face, but I regenerated once and didn’t change my face, so fourteen.”

“You can choose not to change your face?”

“Yeah, that was one of the excited puppy regenerations. I was also very vain.”

“Yeah, you’re definitely not vain now.”

He was glowering at her again.

“So how many people have you travelled with? Must be a lot if you’re two thousand.”

“Well, I didn’t leave Gallifrey til I was oh, four hundred? Six hundred? Not sure anymore. It gets away from you, you know, when you live as long as I have. Probably, oh, I don’t know, fifty?”

“Only fifty? In two thousand years?”

“Yes.”

“Did they stay with you a long time?” It was not quite the question Bill had in mind. She supposed she was really asking, _will I stay with you a long time?_

“Some did, some didn’t. It…” the Doctor sighed, and Bill handed him the mug of cocoa. He blinked, then took a sip. “Thank you.” He paused again, collecting his thoughts. “It wears on you, after a while. Losing people, I mean. You know that.”

“Well, sure, but for me, it’s just my mum –”

“One or fifty, makes no difference. Loss is loss, Bill. Each person leaves a different sort of hole when they go. One day I’ll have one shaped like you.”

The question had seemed harmless, but now Bill blinked hard as the answer sunk in. The snow, gently falling to the roof surface, seemed suddenly to be moving in slow motion.

“Of course, some of them just left because it was time. Time travel wears on you too, even if you don’t lose anyone close to you. You see death all around you when you time travel. Some of them went back to a normal life. Or they went to work for UNIT or Torchwood or something. Clara’s the only one _I’ve_ forgotten, but some of them forgot me. Some of them died.”

“But the ones who – the ones who went back to normal. Couldn’t you go visit them?”

“I could.” The Doctor shrugged and took another sip of cocoa. “But it’s never felt right. It’s hard to give up all of time and space – I mean, look at me. I’ve never been able to do it. If I show up on their doorstep again… well, it would feel like I was pulling them back in against their will. It’s best to leave them alone.”

Bill couldn’t imagine missing someone and having the ability to see them but not seeing them. “But –”

“You’ll understand once you’ve had your turn, Bill Potts.” Then, as if he were reading her mind, he said, “In fact, you could have asked to go back in time and meet your mother, but you never have. So I think you already do understand.”

That was true. The thought had never really occurred to her – at least, not concretely. It had occurred to her in a vague, off-hand sort of way, floating about in the back of her mind, but she’d always sort of assumed, without really entertaining the idea, that the Doctor would say no.

“The answer would be no, by the way. Once took a girl back to meet her dead father before he died. Didn’t go well.”

“Well, what sort of a date is that?” Bill said, but her attempt at levity was half-hearted at best.

The Doctor winced. “Not my best date idea, no.”

Silence descended as if they’d run out of things to say, but Bill knew that wasn’t true. If people and memories became stories after you lost them… how many stories must the Doctor be holding onto? How could he ever run out of things to say?

Bill watched him stare at the snowflakes, idly tapping his finger against the now-empty cup. She pulled her blanket a little tighter, then leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder.

“What was her name?”

“What?” He seemed startled, though whether it was because of the question or the affectionate personal contact, Bill couldn’t say.

“The girl you took back to see her dad. What was her name?”

“Uh, Rose. Her name was Rose.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, the usual. She tried to save him from dying and almost unraveled time and reality itself.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Of course.”

“Was she cute?”

“Of course.”

Bill laughed. “What about the pictures on your desk? Who are they?”

“One’s my granddaughter, one’s my wife.”

“You have a granddaughter?”

“I did.”

“Oh.”

“I might still have, I suppose. I left her on Earth in the 2100s. I’m not really sure what happened to her, but I suspect…” he trailed off.

“And your wife?”

“She died.”

“Oh.”

“Who else have you travelled with?” Bill felt the Doctor looking at her, probably suspiciously, but she kept her head firmly on his shoulder and her eyes firmly locked in front of her.

“Ask the Tardis some time. She’ll give you the slideshow.”

At that, Bill sat up, indignant. The Doctor just looked alarmed. “You really are an idiot,” Bill said. She was vaguely aware that crossing her arms and pouting was immature, but she couldn’t stop herself.

He opened his mouth – probably to agree with her (‘everyone knows that’ or some similar sentiment) – then closed it again. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound meek, exactly (Bill didn’t think he knew the meaning of the word), but he _did_ sound almost like he meant it. She huffed and faced forward.

He hesitated for a long time. And then, slowly, as the snow floated to the ground and the minutes of the night turned into hours and ticked away, the Doctor told Bill about a pair of schoolteachers, stubborn and irritating, who had first taught him how to be the Doctor. As her head drifted back onto his shoulder, he told her about Martha, who, like Bill, had used a story to save the world. He told her about Sarah Jane – though not everything; there was far too much. He told her about Donna, who forgot him. Liz, who was too smart for him. Ace, who was far too fond of blowing things up (Bill snorted at that – as if he never blew anything up). The Brigadier, with whom he had never agreed once (“Why should I have to agree with people?” he had retorted when Bill commented on this). Amy, who had been his best friend. Bill tried to ingrain the names in her mind – Jo, Peri, Jamie, Rory, Tegan, Mel, Wilf, Mickey, Zoe, Polly, Harry, Nyssa, Grace, Jack, Stephen, Benton, and more besides – but the Doctor refused to tell any of the stories in order, and soon she was hopelessly lost.

In the end, though, she supposed it didn’t matter whether she knew all of the Doctor’s companions’ stories. The point was that the Doctor knew them, and she thought it was probably good for him to say them out loud every hundred years or so. She thought back to the pictures of her mum. “If someone’s gone,” she had asked, “do pictures really help?”

The pictures had helped, but it was only because there weren’t any stories of her mum until she had them. ‘Do pictures help?’ was the wrong question, she decided, as the Doctor’s gravelly voice washed over her, nearly lulling her to sleep. The point wasn’t the pictures at all. The point was the stories, of course. The Doctor didn’t have a picture of each of his friends on his desk (there wouldn’t be room, for one thing), but he did keep their stories with him at all times. He had a two thousand year old Time Lord brain. He could do that. That was how he could remember Clara without actually remembering her. It was how he’d remember Bill someday, a thousand years in the future when he was on his forty-seventh new face and she was dead and gone and he was travelling with some other confused earthling who also just so happened to love him to pieces.

It should have been depressing. To know that one day it would all end and all she’d be was a story in his head. But how many other people had that? So many people lived their lives ordinarily – lived well – and were forgotten when they were gone. Bill would be gone someday, but not forgotten.

Bill’s mum had become a story, and she had still saved the world. A story wasn’t such a bad thing to be.

Bill had told him, earlier today, that travelling with him had been worth it – all the danger, all the difficulties, all the blood, sweat, and tears. She had thought she was going to die, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have changed anything. One day she _would_ die, maybe even while travelling with him, but she wouldn’t really die. She’d become a story, or maybe a song he played on an electric guitar in noisy college bars.

She’d live as long as he would.

Maybe even forever.


End file.
